Nearly a year after the 2024 election, Democrats are still trying to figure out what went wrong. In the midst of this soul-searching, new advice has emerged: “Don’t say climate change.”
This is the conclusion from recent survey by the Spotlight Institute, a new think tank for the Democratic Party. Americans said they view climate change as an issue, but it is rarely a top issue—voters in battleground states are more concerned about affordability and health care. But when asked what issue they thought was the Democratic Party's priority, climate change was number one.
This discrepancy may explain, at least in part, why Democrats are often portrayed as out of touch with reality. “Advocates and elected officials need to understand that their message is being actively weakened by a focus on 'climate' rather than affordability and low energy prices, and that voters are looking for immediate help to combat rising costs rather than solutions to abstract problems,” Searchlight said in a report about the poll.
The results didn't surprise Representative Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat and longtime climate activist who argues that clean energy can lower energy bills. Kasten recently presented draft law called “Cheap Energy Program”along with Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California.
“There is no clear electoral advantage to a smart approach to energy and climate policy,” Kasten said. But he still talks about climate change all the time. “Polls don't tell you what you're talking about,” he said. “It tells you how you talk about it.”
Advocacy groups are also involved, including the League of Conservation Voters, Climate Power and others. We are running an advertising campaign this summer blames Republicans for increasing energy prices.
Over the past decade, activists and organizations have pushed Democratic politicians to take climate change seriously. The youth-led Sunrise Movement rose to prominence as a force in climate politics in 2018, when activists broke into the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosidemanding a Green New Deal. Ultimately, they were able to help raise the issue of climate change in the party platform. In 2022, Democrats even passed the nation's most ambitious climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, to accelerate the adoption of clean energy through tax breaks and incentives. dismantled by Republicans this year.
Searchlight's pragmatic approach, based on tracking polling results, was interpreted by some Democrats as a push to give up what they believe in. Tre Easton, vice president of public policy at Searchlight, sees it differently. “It's not that Democrats should simply abandon their long-held political beliefs and values,” he said. “The point is that there needs to be a re-examination of how they communicate this information to voters. Because I think the results of the 2024 election will show that something is not working.”
In fact, it appears that climate change had already begun to fade from the national conversation, long before the Searchlight poll was released. Media coverage of the topic has roughly halved since 2023, according to Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. A survey conducted by his group found that compared with previous years, Americans say they I hear less about climate change in the news, on social media and from people they know. They also aren't searching for as much information on their own: Google News searches for “climate change” have seen a sharp decline since 2023.
Popularity of Google News searches for climate change, percentage change since January 2023.
“The point is that we talk about things that we collectively think are important,” Leiserowitz said. “The conclusion that most people will then draw is that if no one is talking about climate change, then it can’t be that important.” It's out of sight, out of mind.
Leiserowitz argues that the 2024 election was not a referendum on climate change. Most Americans still worried about global warmingaccording to the Yale University program's most recent survey. “They haven’t changed their views or concerns about climate change at all,” Leiserowitz said. “What has the elite’s discourse on this issue has changed.”
It's not just Democratic politicians who are talking less about climate change. The progressive left is also turning its attention to other pressing issues. For example, the Voskhod movement switched focus from climate change to the fight for free speech rights and protests under President Donald Trump, teaching its members nonviolent resistance tactics. Progressive activists oppose the administration's crackdown on immigration, protesting outside ICE facilities and National Guard deployments in cities such as Chicago, Portland and Washington, DC. Estimated weekend 7 million people According to organizers, he participated in the “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration.
“At least for us – and I don't know how many others feel the same way – but it's like the territory of authoritarianism, the territory of fascism, that's what we're trying to deal with so that we can actually fight for everything else that we're trying to fight for,” said Aru Shini-Ajay, chief executive of Sunrise. Still, she said, it's important not to lose sight of their core problem.
“Nobody wants to walk away from the problem of climate change,” Saini-Ajay said. “I think everyone is clear that we need to constantly remind people that we are doing this because we are young people fighting for a decent future.”
Leiserowitz said Searchlight's advice (“How to talk about climate change: Don't”) fails to distinguish between climate advocates and Democrats running for office in swing states. It might make sense for a politician in a tight race to tailor his message to the polls, but climate organizations have other goals than getting Democrats elected, he said. “If your goal is to achieve general public action on climate change, not talking about it is crazy.”
Searchlight and others dispute the idea that Democrats have talk about climate change in order to gain political action on the issue, arguing that it is easier to pass legislation on an issue that was not drawn into a polarizing national debate. “There are a lot of actions that have been very important to climate change, for example, that have happened in the so-called 'secret' or 'quiet Congress', behind the scenes,” said Josh Fried, senior vice president for climate and energy at the think tank Third Way. He pointed to the height bipartisan support for nuclear energy legislation as an example. Last year, members of Congress from both parties overwhelmingly supported ADVANCE LawThe legislation, signed by President Joe Biden, aims to speed up the development of new reactors.
There is growing recognition that the way politicians talk about climate change, using jargon and abstract language, is also part of the problem. “The way to win is to talk about cost,” Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who has been a strong advocate for climate action, said at the conference recent New York Times event. “You can talk about planetary emergency, mitigation and adaptation, and you can throw in some environmental justice rhetoric, and by the time you're done talking, people will think you don't care about them.”
While the “cheap energy” argument is in vogue, not everyone is convinced it resonates with voters. “Voters can tell when affordability is an afterthought, and that doesn't counteract the toxicity of the term 'climate,'” Searchlight said.
“We phrased it in a particularly provocative way to kind of keep the conversation going,” Easton said. But he believes Democrats still have an opportunity to talk about the issue. “If you have an issue as important as climate change, but it has become polarized, you need to think creatively about how you address it politically.”
